School finds unexpected objects and expense during construction
By Rebecca Ray
As construction workers unearth unknown pipes and foundations at Los Gatos High School, district officials find themselves having to dig up ways to finance and finish the school's construction projects.
Everywhere workers dig, they find fixtures in the ground that aren't on the district's current maps, said Richard Meyer, building projects director of the Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union High School District. Either moving these fixtures, bringing them up to code, or building around them has caused every project at the school to cost much more than anticipated, leaving district and school officials to seek additional sources of revenue.
Original projections for the construction projects at Los Gatos High School estimated the total cost to be more than $47.5 million. That estimate has since grown to more than $56.6 million, according to Geoffrey Teall, the district's assistant superintendent for administrative services.
At the April 17 district board meeting, district officials plan to ask the board to authorize them to issue $5 million in certificates of participation. The certificates allow the district to borrow money from its future redevelopment funds.
According to Teall, other funding sources for construction projects for both Los Gatos High School and Saratoga High School, include $600,000 from the state in deferred maintenance funds, about $9.2 million in state modernization funds and the money from Measure B. Voters passed the $79 million Measure B bond, which funds construction and renovation projects at both high schools in the district, in June 1998.
About nine school administrators and teachers, parents and community members are also forming a foundation that will be part of the existing Los Gatos Foundation, the umbrella organization for the school's alumni association and Community Against Substance Abuse program. The new foundation, which is still unnamed, will hold annual fundraisers. Members, who include school principal Trudy McCulloch and vice principal Doug Ramezane, plan to hold their first fundraiser the weekend of Sept. 14, when the school has its first football game of the season against St. Francis High School.
The foundation members have no fundraising goal. They just want to raise as much money as they can, since prices seem to change each day due to unexpected costs and inflation, McCulloch said. She added that despite the district's need for more funds to finish the projects, all projects will be finished and only the style in which they are finished will change.
District officials were caught by surprise when workers uncovered two pipes that were each about 20 inches in diameter under the proposed site of the school's new science/home economics building. The pipes, one which was still in use, belonged to the San Jose Water Company. Rather than spending half a million dollars on moving the pipes, seeking the necessary permission for the move and drastically changing the construction schedule and cost of the projects, the district decided to relocate the new science/home economics building 12 feet from the original site, the district said.
Workers also found an electrical wire underground, about four feet from the pool--a potentially dangerous situation in the event of an earthquake. If the pool had cracked, the water could have been electrified by the wire, which has since been encased in concrete to prevent such a calamity.
A parent group, an entity separate from the school foundation, has been raising money to build a new pool in place of the current pool that they maintain is outdated, and too small and shallow for certain events. Although group has raised $1.1 million of the $1.5 million or so needed to build a 25-meter by 25-yard pool, they would like to raise a total of $2.3 million so they can build a 25-meter by 50-yard pool, which qualifies as Olympic-sized.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
